The Daily Zeitgeist - Germicidal UV Zeits 11/7: AMPTP, Biden, Hollywood Deaths, WeWork, 1st Gen Social Media

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

In this edition of Germicidal UV Zeits, Jack and Miles discuss the AMPTP's best and final offer (rhetorically speaking), Biden's polling freefall, how Hollywood affects how we view the end of our lives, WeWork filing for bankruptcy, and 1st gen social media users: where do they go from here?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just

starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of Germicidal Ultraviolet Zytes,

courtesy of Johnny Davis and the organizers of that Bored Ape that board ape NFT event where welders, I, everybody came away with a little case of the, uh, how you say welders, I, um, or arc.

I, because you're looking at an art. Well, this is all, it's never good. It's never good. An ocular sunburn resulting from prolonged exposure to harmful UV rays. And this happened because people were dancing it up,

celebrating in the face of people's doubt about the longevity of their body. The NFT movement. The NFT movement. God. And they got some burned corneas. Got a little cornea burn. i don't know that sounds so fucked up i don't even yeah i don't i don't even want to i don't like it it's so weird too that like you wouldn't figure out till after the fact like you couldn't like or i don't know have people been around these things and be like you know if uv rays are

fucking your eyes up like that you know what i mean like or is it one of those things where it like takes a second and then the next day you're like my shits are cooked you wake up you wake up and try to open your eyes and they're just like glued shut like that homer simpson gif exactly mr simpson you need your drop so your eyes will crust over there you go with the add-ons like when i googled this because i actually didn't know what uh mr davis was referring to on the discord some of the articles that popped up were like from the pandemic being like yeah these things are going to be everywhere to kill the germs oh those right on the porch they will give your eyeballs sunburn anyways uh i'm jack that's miles these are some of the things that are trending uh the am ptp

yes there you go amp uh has issued their best and final uh uh, to, to the actors. Yeah. And you know what? One of the details that people seem fixated on for some reason is that they can pay you once to scan you and then not never pay you again. Yeah. To quote George Bush, scan you once shame on you. Scan you. You can't get scanned again.

You're not going to scan me again. Okay. All right. Good to know. It also sounds like right now the AMPTP is now saying they will adjust language around AI. Oh, hot damn. How did how things change it's like 30 minutes ago it's tough for them with this world where like we actually pay attention to the bullshit that they try to pull you know and also like really pulling up with your chest out like that

like this is our best and final offer and they're like or what or okay fine or there'll be more ai people i know it's the it's rhetorically our best and final offer okay that wasn't our best because now we're clearly gonna meet you somewhere in the middle with ai but yeah ongoing saga there ongoing ongoing uh well speaking of george w bush uh i recently heard somebody refer to where Joe Biden is currently as similar to like where Bush was in the aftermath of Katrina. Like, Oh, in terms of just like the absolute lack of moral authority, you know,

like we've seen you just ignore horrifying shit and just try and like keep it moving. And I guess I was just curious like i've heard people kind of assume that this is what's happening to his polling numbers that that's what it seems like to me but then when you like go to the new york times article about like joe biden's polling in free fall all of a sudden this month, you might think that the major story of, you know, what's happening in Gaza that has like dominated every day of news for the past month would be the focus of a shocking polling free fall for Biden over that same period. And specifically like his polling is in free fall among people of color, specifically during a time that he has demonstrated what would seem to be a belief that the lives of, you know, brown people in Palestine are worth less in the grand colonial scheme of things than the lives of white people.

Yeah. But like the New York Times articles just like, yeah, well, people think he's old. And it's like, well, they've thought he's old for a while. Yeah, that was a thing that they've been talking about since last year or the concern or whatever. But yeah, that's very convenient to leave that part out because there are people who are doing polling specifically of Arab Americans. And they showed that he went from around 60% support of arab americans to now like 17 yes uh and that and they say is like astounding because it's never there's never been a precipitous drop so quickly in such a short amount of time uh like with with this specific community but also when they are like, look at the polling, it,

it, it goes across all like the cross taps, like no matter religion or gender and things like that age. And yeah, to your point, a lot of people of color to also see something that resonates with them on some level where it's systemic oppression or watching milk, like people, Palestinian people literally walking to relocate you know what i mean

like and like i think andrew jackson might just might harken back to the time of andrew jackson with the trail of tears uh so there's a lot of things that resonate with people but you also see like these really weird things too where they're like it's tiktok actually that's the problem right and you're like are you really doing the principal skinner thing right now it's like it's it me it's the kids who are the children um and i think again this goes back to the idea like people know more people are are informing themselves a little bit more so like to do this like full court press of manufacturing consent and it not working like i don't know i don't know why that's a shock like people are are a little bit more tapped in and there's plenty of people that aren't but it's

just wild and then you also hear people like democratic strategists that are like well you know like if there's a woman who is not supporting biden right now she'll figure it out once you know like november comes because they don't want to vote against their own rights and that's so november comes because they don't want to vote against their own rights and that's so fucking patronizing and callous and also like plays into the like biden's administration and just the democratic party in general not doing shit to protect reproductive rights it it i don't know like none of their none of the levers are working uh right it seems like for them so yeah i i mean obviously a year is a very long time in when it comes to politics but this is just i don't know like like a lot of the shit that you see right now what's happening in gaza like you can't unsee it and then

you can't be like disconnect the idea they're like but we give them the capability to do that right so are we also you know like a journalist recently asked a representative from like the state department about like is there any concern that like you know these are like because these are international war crimes that like the u.s is a party to that because they're providing the ammunitions and like it's just like completely glossed over but sure because we all we all know how the u.s works they're like oh you want to take us to the hague we'll invade everywhere if you try that shit with us right it's not a good default position to have uh when you're talking about international law but yeah yeah the new york times article specifically like

reporting on it mentions gaza in like one sentence fragment about how people like trust trump more on foreign policy they're like yeah and uh specifically in israel they trust they trust him by 11 percentage points and just like kind of keep it moving but i wonder if he is like getting that message like i i'm assuming he's pretty well insulated by these democratic strategists who are from a different era where it's just like, yes, we just ride with Israel. No questions asked.

And like, that's good for you. Yeah. Like just going full neoliberal and being like, this is what we do, dude. I don't know. I can't really just got to remind them how good the economy is.

Yeah. It's, and again, it just, this doesn't help anyone. This is like every day that this like this genocidal campaign continues it's it's it's radicalizing people in every direction it's causing more chaos there was a guy who was at a protest in california who was like uh supporting israel like and there was like an like a pro-palestine thing and he got shoved or something and hit his head and died yeah uh

it's things aren't like and to to think that it's like oh this ends well right like like let's even let's even game out the logic they destroy whatever quote-unquote destroy hamas means you're right we've seen this play out you're just going to create a vacuum for something worse to show up right and do you think people the people of palestine are going to say all right y'all got us um all right like back to like i don't understand like even it even defies like how we believe human beings to respond to trauma um so it just all feel it's just it yeah every day gets worse and worse and then like then there's like headlines i saw that the idf has put together like a short film of like really awful um october 7th attack footage uh to just try and

like i don't know they're like their screenings potentially happening in New York and Los Angeles. Jesus Christ. And it's like, how quickly are you like reducing these people who actually lost their lives into this like obscene piece of propaganda to justify the killing of more innocent people? It's just,

everything feels so all over the place, man. and all, and all you're asking is like the u.s to the supposed leader of the free world to actually do something the killing of innocent people yeah and to hear people say things like well you know i don't know what else to do how about you say we can we won't give you munitions right why is that that's not even a thing that's discussed and i get that that in terms of our that's's such a departure from American foreign policy. But to act like nothing can be done that doesn't help people feel good about what is happening or how the U.S. is involved with that.

So, yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and talk about some other stuff. We'll be right back. And talk about some other stuff. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films

and L.A.-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre.

It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish

about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Santos! Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture.

We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows. That we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better.

With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other. All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. affects how we visualize the end of our lives yeah like we we talk you know you you bring this up a lot about how like movies and tv are sort of like form the bedrock of like our understanding of certain parts of like life you know what i mean yeah they affect how you imagine things that you haven't experienced yet right so a country you haven't been to getting your whole shit bit by a great white your whole shit bit by great white or like your future like how your life will end like i've seen way more plane crashes than i've seen people die of cancer in a movie and therefore i that like my brain at some level believes I'm going to die in a plane crash. Or dying in a plane crash is more likely than dying of cancer, even though that's wildly incorrect.

To that end, right? The USC and this organization, EndWell, they're dedicated to dismantling barriers and confronting stigmas surrounding end-of-life experiences. They just found, while doing an analysis of TV and film for the last 20 last 20 odd years, they're like, yeah, like just everything is so violent. Quote, the study found scripted television skews heavily toward violent death with over 80 percent of television deaths caused by violence. It noted research that shows depictions of gun violence on popular primetime dramas doubled from 2000 to 2018. And then shooting, stabbing, poisonings and beatings together made up 49 of depicted tv deaths while illness was only 4.3 percent um and then so like their whole thing is like if a majority like characters experience a violent death it's already painting a very skewed picture that

deprives viewers of like a better representation of sort of what end of life care specifically could look like and like what options are like we talked about i need to prepare for end of life care man i'm going out in a hail of bullets exactly or a plane crash or a tornado is going to throw me into the sky and i'll never come down um there's like a lot of research i would talk about psychedelics and psychedelics used for like end of life sort of therapy to help people sort of come to grips with their mortality but that isn't even really like a scripted thing in media they even pointed out quote for instance in our investigation of discussion of psychedelics and scripted programming we found hundreds of mentions but only three storylines where psychedelics were used to treat patients

and only two of those are about treating end of life um so basically saying like there's so much room for creators to paint more like realistic representations and i get that obviously sensational stuff is they're like just like gets people or whatever yeah but it doesn't quite capture like the the breadth of human experience um and it's like you know people are like we're all like experts in like understanding like stab wounds and poisonings because of the tv shows we watch but have no idea about like differences like what's palliative care right hospice um and it just you know they're going on to say that like there's a lot that can help people understand sort of what these what this sort of looks like because we're only getting presented the version that is just very violent and sensationalized so interesting i didn't really quite think of that but now when i think when

you look at the statue like yeah right everybody's like killed freaking stuff like unless you're watching like a medical drama and they even point to the fact that a lot of medical dramas are also kind of like not doing the best job of showing like oh yeah it's always like some strange like unprecedented illness it's never like yeah this person has been smoking for 45 years and right finally just caught up to them you know yeah it's right right right and like even grief like how that's not even it's like used as like a plot point too it's like this care grieving character this is the jumping off point for all this like activity following this or whatever and there are other ways to depict it so yeah interesting analysis for sure yeah yeah we work uh which we launched this podcast from a we work we did we absolutely

did we were in hollywood did not have an office yet and so so we were working out of a WeWork with a strap room. Yeah, it really felt like a broom closet. That shit was not an office. No, no. Well, I had asked them, give me one without windows because it was going to be a lot of reverb if we had windows.

And they were like, I mean, you could have this shit hole over here. And they're like you know shoot some rats out of the way uh and politely they're like do you guys mind leaving we got some people that are actually paying now and they're like but i think in the early episodes we're talking about like the you know the spa water that they had there the nice little cucumber water yeah nice little perks but it was not fun to work there but at that time we were rocket growth juggernaut to everyone was uh they were valued in 2019 at 47 billion dollars in a round uh of

funding and they were aiming to like hit the stock market and become basically the next i don't know airbnb or like something like that work airbnb and then it all fell apart yeah like people realized that that valuation was like based on basically they were valuing themselves like a tech company instead of like a real estate company and so they were like tech companies you can value yourself at like 8x what you're actually making money wise or some like really high number whereas real estate you can value yourself at like 2x and they were like well when you think about it we're kind of a tech company like we have an app right that people can sign into and everyone's like oh oh no and so um and then there was like a lot of behavior behind the scenes that made it made them fun to dunk on

as as people as investors were realizing this the ceo a lot of self-dealing there basically fucked it all up and but also a lesson about how people get so caught up in this like silicon valley like visionary shit that they're like yeah it actually uh defies all logic that we have about how you know macroeconomics work but don't worry we're going to the fucking tops put put a saddle on this unicorn because we're going to have it. This guy's got a big personality and he's fun to party with. So they have since lost 98% of their value, the company. The reason we're talking about it, they have filed for bankruptcy. In mid-August, they announced a 1 for 40 reverse stock split to get its shares trading back above $1, which is a requirement for keeping its New York Stock Exchange.

Buy the dip, bro. Thank you. Getting 10,000 shares, bro. Watch this shit, Jack. Yeah. But anyways, you hate to see it. There's an article on Wired

about first-gen social media users. Yeah. Millennials. and just how like they're now now that twitter is bordering on unusable and headed let's just say let's just call it more unusable it's unusable it's unusable i think we're in denial like we're seeing it's like when a relationship's really bad you're like but i laughed last night right and it's like yeah but how's everything else awful awful yeah it's really bad if you could be in a relation i would break up with them then i think you have your answer that's the vibes right now yeah yeah so people are like so where do they go from here has been how it's been covered up to this point this wired article is like or do they just like not go anywhere are they like oh social media was

like a an experiment that went badly and now we go back to living our lives in reality yeah i mean i don't know like it's just this is this excerpt that people are sharing from the article that said quote millennials are the last of the analog world both of yesterday and tomorrow the bridge between what was and what will be maybe this is where my hesitation takes root and why it feels like there are no good apps left for socializing the way we used to. We came of age on a diet of chat rooms and MySpace. Our expression was devoutly digital. We signed up en masse because we sought in the next frontier of adulthood. We slowly realized was being actualized online. Friendster, Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook were where we found community, in the next frontier of adulthood we slowly realized was being actualized online friendster

blogger tumblr twitter and facebook were where we found community honed our creative urges and secured careers in time we used social media to remake civic life okay it feels a little you know okay i see where you're going with that but i feel like that evolution definitely like i remember being going from no internet ever to dialing up on aol to like just seeing what the you know all the shit that was possible online to then even like making youtube videos or funnier dive videos and things like that and knowing that like there was like all this possibility and now it just feels everything has been like co-opted by like just corporate interests that have no

like see no value and what the connectivity aspect is and just like you know farming for data um or just like shit that is completely uh unmoderated and become total cesspits and there's no there's no there's there's nothing like a value or you have to wade through too much excrement to find the real stuff so yeah yeah i don't know i i there's like one part i was talking about is like this person's like i use twitter maybe three or four times a year i barely post anymore and i've seen how like even myself like i've i went from loving to post shit on instagram i really love and then i just slowly, it's like, I don't know.

What am I getting? It feels weird. It's just like, yeah, like, I don't know what happened, but it could just be a function of getting older. But I still do.

Like, I miss that excitement of like when it was a little bit more pure or maybe it was always like, it just seemed pure in the beginning because we were always kind of pursuing something a little bit toxic underneath at the end. Right. So I don't know, I don't know which way it is exactly, but I definitely feel the, like the lap,

the, the lost love and it's on some level. Yeah. That paragraph like reminded me of the year 2010. Like when it was like, we are going to, you know, like it has that like propulsive energy of like,

and you know, the sky's the limit. Who knows what we're going to do with this? like it, it has that like propulsive energy of like, and you know, the sky's the limit. Who knows what we're going to do with this? And it's like, Oh, the, it just became a marketing tool that wound its way into like the very fibers of, of air.

Yeah. And stuff. I don't know if there is even like, I don't know if there is an app that would come out that you're like, Oh, there it is. You know what I mean? Like there's the thing,

or it's always just some version mean like there's the thing or it's always just some version of like i don't know fucking the the racists are just going to show up eventually and just like fuck or whatever the fuck happens or you know what i mean yeah i feel like it would need to be something on the model of like wikipedia or open source you know projects where it's like people like a community that isn't owned and isn't like trying to make a profit and is somehow using hippie crap yeah like hippie shit it would have to be some hippie bullshit i think right is i wonder if that would put investors off like you just it's called hippie crap but it's actually like the best social media platform just to scare off investors. I mean, that's something that they talk about in Ministry for the Future, and I've heard other people.

I think Douglas Rushkoff talks about it in his book that we had him on to discuss on one of our recent Tuesday Expert episodes. Like the idea that some of the most successful things in the history of this, these past like 30, 40 years online have been like open source, like community driven things like that just, you know, did, didn't drive a profit. And the whole internet is like written on the back of that code or like the

one website that still like works right wikipedia right and the reason for that is because it but it's just they they don't get hyped they don't get any media attention because it's like well this is this completely undermines the fucking circulatory system that our entire like political body is like built out of yeah they look at wikipedia like how do you guys make the line go up they're like you mean with users right no that's why elon musk is like so hostile towards it he's like look at these losers asking for uh donations anyway uh neo-nazis pay me five dollars a month yeah and you will be you will get special blue

check mark or it's like when i was like in college and like my friends used to smoke weed with stop smoking weed and tell me like you know i'm actually not smoking weed i'm like oh really so you're better than me now like it's that kind of that kind of shit too right be in the muck yeah uh well anyway where to go from here who knows it's impossible just hang out at the park dude we should just go back to those like electrical transformer boxes that would just randomly be on a sidewalk you know wait what i'm talking about you know like those just like shit that hold on you know you don't you know this is like the all spark no the transformers the trend in transformers like isn't that what they're looking for no dude

i don't even i don't know that movie at all but this kind of shit you know like an electric like just like that box that would be somewhere random you're like we can't get by we just kick it by the yard over at that spot yeah like maybe we should go back to bring our kids let's hang out in parking lots again like we used to yeah could you imagine pitching that for a while even before the internet was broken you've been like hey guys come hang out with me on this uh transformer yeah um those were the days those were the days i'll tell you about a new new app called the stoop yeah where you hang out out there and you see people with your damn eyeballs instead of a virtual

reality helmet. Tell them, Pa. Alright. Well, those are some of the things that are trending. Yeah. We are back tomorrow with the whole last episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Get the vaccine. Don't do nothing about white supremacy. And we will talk to you all

tomorrow. Bye. Bye. primacy and we will talk to y'all tomorrow bye bye i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary series dancing for the devil the 7m tiktok cult and i'm cleo gray former member of 7m films and shekinah church and we're the host of the new podcast forgive me Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do,

like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.